The Daily Show and The Colbert Report and Me

I’m going to go ahead and say it – I love The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. I know that The Daily Show is hosted by a guy who loves to bash on Republicans and that The Colbert Report does nothing but satirize crazy right wingers, but I don’t care. I love them both. Jon Stewart is brilliant, and I’m not going to insult his brains just because he happens to be a liberal. Maybe his writers just make him seem smart, but even during interviews he seems like he’s really intelligent. Colbert does a great job at what he does too, even if his character doesn’t try to come across as smart. In order to play a character like that for a half hour show five times a week you have to be very good at what you do.

That’s why I’m never going to speak badly about these two people and their shows. I know they generally aim their insults at conservatives, but I think it’s deeper than that. They each have a deep frustration with government in general in a nonpartisan sense, they just happen to lean toward a side that makes fun of Republicans more than Democrats. They take this frustration and turn it not into anger like partisan news, but rather into humor. They mock the system. They do exactly what I try to do, and I respect them for that immensely. They just happen to have different political leanings. (Note – this doesn’t apply to blatantly liberal partisan “news” reporters that try to be funny. Go over the top and I hate it).

You want to know true bipartisanship? I agree with the points that Colbert and Stewart try to make about 75% of the time. Politically the three of us are extremely different, however it all comes down to a dislike of the direction that the government is taking us that transcends politics. In an argument involving anger there is no way I would ever agree with either of these guys, but because they use humor to poke at the flaws in our system I tend to agree with them more often. People underestimate the power of being funny.